Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Every year people arrive in the United States of America to start a new life here. Some of them are refugees, fleeing their country due to military conflicts, fear of persecution and other harsh circumstances. The maximum number of refugees allowed to enter the country is set by the President of the United States annually. In the past twenty years, this admission ceiling was between 90,000 and 70,000 people, while for the current year of 2017 it was raised to 110,000. The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration tracks various information about admitted individuals; today, we will look at religion.
During the last 15 years, most refugees admitted to U.S. were Christian (42.5 percent). Muslim refugees accounted for 32.26 percent of all cases, while Hindus and Buddhists made up 6.1 percent and 5.5 percent respectively. About 10 percent of admitted refugees followed other religions, and only 2.2 percent stated that they were not religious.
If we examine the historical data, the number of Christian refugees was usually the highest among our selected religious groups, with exceptions in 2005-2006, 2013-2014 and 2016 — during these years the number of Muslim refugees admitted was higher. Since the admission ceiling was raised in 2016, it also saw the largest numbers of Christian and Muslim refugees enter the U.S. The highest number of Hindu refugees were admitted in 2009 (nearly 12,000), and have been declining ever since. Nearly 7,000 Buddhist refugees were admitted in 2012, making it largest number so far.
Each year followers of a certain religious group may come from different countries since admission ceilings for the countries change. In this chart, a two-level distribution on admitted refugees is shown for each year. For example, in 2002, most Christian refugees came from Ukraine (about 5,000), while the highest number of Muslim refugees came from Bosnia and Herzegovina (about 3,000). The situation was quite different in 2016: Christian refugees were mostly from Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma, while Muslim refugees came from Syria, Somalia and Iraq.
About Alexander Fishkov
Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Alexander is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science. He currently holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Applied Math. He has experience working for industry major companies performing research in the fields of machine learning, data mining and natural language processing. In his free time, Alexander enjoys hiking, Nordic skiing and traveling.
Other posts by Alexander Fishkov: